Reading Luke/Acts Together #49 – He Ascended???
We’re reading Acts – slowly at first! Today, pick up a Bible (or do a search on your phone or laptop!) and read Acts, chapter 1, verses 6 through 11. The epicenter of this short, amazing text, is verse 8: 'You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes, and you shall be my witnesses in all the earth.' When Jesus said this, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." If you’re an intellectual, a skeptic – then good! Keep reading.
For people in Bible times, who thought of the world as a flat surface, with heaven as a chamber up above the clouds, the story of Jesus ascending seemed entirely natural. For modern people, "up" loses its meaning after so many miles... and telescopes peer far beyond where biblical people imagined as the "top" of heaven.
So how do we make any sense of "He ascended into heaven"? Earlier in this series, we explained that Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t the resuscitation of his corpse, but that Jesus was raised with a "spiritual body” (as Paul describes in in 1 Corinthians 15). Body, yes. Spiritual, yes. He’s real, but he’s morphed into something beyond our usual 3-dimensional being and seeing. {And God doesn’t mind if you’re shaking your head over this – but isn’t it strangely hopeful?}
Jesus "appeared" and then was gone; his appearances lasted for forty days, but then stopped. Jesus then was gone – yet he was exactly where we would expect him to be: with the God he had spoken with so intimately on earth. Jesus could be nowhere else but in heaven, which for us need not be a place an astronomer could pinpoint - and perhaps for that very reason is the fullness of togetherness with God. God’s work in Jesus is cosmic, literally universe-al.
In The Lord of the Rings, the wise, old, Christ-like wizard Gandalf is with the hobbits for while on their adventure, but then he leaves them on their own for some time. They face horrific difficulties, requiring ferocious courage and intense hope; they need each other, and stick together in a fellowship that would rather suffer than falter. Gandalf shows up again at the climax - but then bids them farewell once more.
The Bible narrates a story with a plot that is kin to this, I think. Jesus heals, teaches, dazzles, confuses, suffers, and then is raised - and then he leaves. What a demonstration of trust! and what a challenge for us. Instead of dominating his people, instead of insisting that they never get out from under his heels, he leaves them on their own.
But they are not alone. As Jesus ascended, he said "Lo, I am with you always!" (Matthew 28:16). He had promised: "I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, who will guide you into all truth" (John 14). The Christian life leaves considerable room for us to make our own way; courage, hope, and fellowship are essential. We remember Jesus, we embody what he was about, and even though he isn't tangibly in front of us, his Spirit moves us, motivates us, encourages us in his absence.
For we have work to do. We’re in Book 2 for Luke, when Jesus’ Church, his Body – and now that means us! – continues what Jesus began doing. And it’s real life, on the ground, not a still life. Acts lays out the geography of the Christian life. We start in Jerusalem – where we are now – and then spread out in all directions: Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. No “missions only at home” with Jesus!
And don’t forget that theologically, the ascension of Jesus to God the Father blazes the trail on which we are blessed to follow. We sang it Easter morning: “Soar we now where Christ has led.” Hebrews 12:1 calls Jesus “the pioneer of our faith,” and is seated where we are destined to wind up: “at the right hand of God.” Paul, in Ephesians 2, gives us so much hope: "God, rich in mercy, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places." Indeed, Christ came, not so he could be like us, but so we could become like him, and enjoy the beauty of togetherness with God forever.